


hands to heaven, hands together

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Gen, Holding Hands, Ignis thinks he's going to die, Major Character Injury, Musical References, My First Work in This Fandom, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Team Chocobros, Team as Family, Teamwork, Worry, inappropriate musical references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 04:10:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12203613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Something happens to Ignis and the rest of Team Chocobros freaks the fuck out.





	hands to heaven, hands together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [johanirae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/johanirae/gifts).



_Pop Six Squish Cicero Lipschitz_   
_Pop Six Squish Cicero Lipschitz FUCK_

He was -- listening to a voice that was familiar, but there was something wrong with the voice. Too much shaking for some reason. Prompto was more than capable of carrying a tune, especially if it was a childlike made-up one, so why would his voice shake so?

And why did it sound like it was coming from so far away? 

The response, too, when it came: distant, as though from across a road, across a world. "I'm with you on that last word -- but all the rest, are you trying to talk about the Six? You know their names, and those aren't -- " The Prince, that was the Prince, the words jagged-edged.

A third voice, growling, wordless irritable.

(The growl seemed unsteady, too, and that was really wrong. Nothing ever seemed to faze Gladio.)

"What was it, Prompto? What were you singing?"

"I -- don't know?" Equally distressed response, all out of tune, all the determined cheerfulness drained away for some reason. "It just came to me. Catchy, it's catchy, but it doesn't make sense, I know it doesn't." The pause, when it came, was like millstones, like the very heaviest of a set of free weights, laced into each syllable. "Can't think of anything else. 'm scared, Noct."

"Yeah," and Noctis, Prince Noctis, wasn't supposed to sound like they'd been overrun by demons. 

He had to do something about it, had to help -- that was his duty, that was his responsibility above all other considerations --

But: he could not lift a finger.

He could only sort of distantly feel his limbs: and when he tried to wiggle his foot it was all he could do not to scream -- white-hot pain like flames licked at every point and inch of his skin and sinews and bones and he thought, _make it stop make it stop Six make it stop --_

He choked, bile and fear sour and cutting on his tongue -- he fought to draw in just one clean breath, just one -- 

Something was screaming --

It was the night, the endless bitter clawing night, come for him -- 

String of rough obscenities, surely that was more like Gladio but it seemed like it was Prompto --

What Gladio actually said sounded like, "No choice."

Sounded like, "Hold him still."

And now he was well and truly pinned and -- flash of clarity, of what he thought of as a grim and horrified understanding.

No point in struggling, now, if he was pinned, and if Gladio was saying those words: there would be no more salvation, not here, not this time, not in the face of holding them all back --

So he went limp. Let his mouth fall open, when he felt the fingertip prying. He'd make it easy on them. Take his death quietly, since they were administering it to him. At the very least, it was them. He trusted them to do it right.

Still he knew that gibbering wordless keening fear, rattling in his throat, squeezing his heart -- now he was falling falling falling and hot tears were falling onto his skin --

He thought he could hear a final small sob -- thought he had been that last one to sob --

*

"We had to give him the one thing that he gets a hangover from."

He heard himself growl. Knew he needed to stop growling. But all he could do was keep his eyes down. Locked to the sparse weeds struggling up between his feet.

Smell of spilled blood, lingering. The pungent bitter fumes of the last of the firewater he'd poured down Ignis's throat, leafy furry greenish matter in the very dregs. Greenish liquid to match, trickling from the corner of Ignis's mouth. Bile, still stinking on the soil, and the sour stench of fear in his sweat, in the others' pained breaths.

"I wish I'd paid more attention when he was going on and on about -- natural medicines."

He wrenched his gaze up, reluctantly, to meet that of Noctis. Snarled, "You want sympathy, you're not finding it from me right now." 

He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth -- he could understand, only too sharply, the flinch in those eyes that was soon overshadowed by a cold wounded pride -- but Gladio knew literally nothing else to say or do that could help the man laid out by the weak crackling campfire.

Ignis lay, rigid, on all of their sleeping bags piled on top of each other. Sunken shallow breaths, too far between, and laboring with intoxication besides. The deep lines etched into his face, that would have been gorgeous, would have been like sculptural, if they had not been twisted in pain. Brown stains on the ill-knotted bandages wrapped around his torso.

Wrong, wrong, it was all wrong. Wrong and he hated it more than he could express it: Ignis, lying still. Too still. 

But he needed to lay still and unconscious until Noctis could summon the strength he needed for -- things like healing, like basic restorative draughts. 

So he, Gladio, had poured that terrible firewater into him -- and in choking it down, weeping, Ignis must have thought terrible things, final things, _fatal_ things -- he must have thought he was drinking poison, one more kindness done to ease the last blow -- 

He was going to live, Gladio thought. Live, and be surly as hell, as he tried to get past his hangover.

Gladio had no idea how he was going to convince himself, because he knew he wouldn't convince the other two.

Noctis falling into his camp chair, and only unfamiliar eyes would think he looked feckless and bored.

But the moment Prompto returned from drawing another jug of water Noctis reached for his hand -- and Prompto met him halfway, falling to the ground next to the Prince, and he didn't relax his white-knuckled grip on his gun, though the night beyond the feeble firelight was only quietly buzzing with droning insects, the soft tread of animals large and small.

Gladio tore his eyes away from their joined hands. 

He would not look at Ignis, either -- not till he could believe that Ignis was going to be all right.

That left him with -- brooding. 

With the memory of claws and teeth coming, loping in from the dusk and the lack of stars in the dreary sky -- rabid gnash and screech, ravening rage, and the added insult of half a dozen stray MTs. The rattling echo of their weapons appearing and disappearing, the clash and the cry of close-quarters combat. 

He'd been aware of planting himself several feet away from the Regalia, protecting it, allowing its bulk to protect him -- and though he was constantly trying to shift from one opponent to another as they died on his sword, he also knew, as if by instinct, how Ignis tried to control the battlefield. 

How he called the others in for healing -- how he threw one or the other of his knives to Noctis, always ready to aid and to abet -- how he struck at those demons that Prompto had already mortally wounded, dealing out the finishing blows --

And maybe, maybe, how Ignis kept circling back around to him, always just out of the full range of the greatsword and always just close enough to keep everything else from trying to flank him.

They were a team, him and Prompto and Ignis, they were the team charged with Noctis's protection -- but in the very heat of the fight, in the places where the weapons rose and fell, they all seemed to work better as a team with Ignis as the linchpin, with Ignis as the solid wall behind their backs --

Not him, ran the razored thoughts in Gladio's head: never him. He, too, depended on Ignis, if nothing else then to pass on the healing potions when Noctis could spare enough strength to make them --

They had needed every last one of those potions in that last skirmish. Every last drop of power Noctis could spare for that particular purpose, until all that power was spent. 

And then Noctis himself had drained the last little bottle dry, fruit juice that he had also turned into something that would stop the copious bleeding in his sword-arm.

Leaving them all high and dry until he could recover.

Gladio knew in his rational mind that there was no possible kind of blame to place on the Prince's shoulders for what happened next, which was: 

Ignis, paler and sweat-stained, his collar wilting as he wove towards the Regalia.

And slumping, down as though pulled to the ground and its stones, a near-soundless sigh the only sign of distress they had heard -- 

Blood pooling around Ignis's fallen form, from the deep gouges in his torso.

If Gladio kept his eyes closed in the here and now, he'd see the wounds in Ignis, still hideous crimson.

And if he opened his eyes he was drawn, helpless, to Ignis's collapsed form and shallow breaths.

He opened his eyes.

Crossed to kneel next to Ignis.

Took one clammy hand in both of his.

And vaguely he felt other presences, hemming him in, one on each side.

One hand wrapped in a silken half-glove, the other pale and freckled.

He held on to Ignis, and he wondered if they did too, and all he heard was Prompto babbling that line, like some strange prayer.

* 

Ignis woke, and his head was throbbing and his left hand was too heavy to lift.

He raised his right instead. It seemed to be all in working order.

So he tried to look over that way, to see if he could find out some clue as to his hand.

He saw four hands wrapped around his, and three men leaning on each other's shoulders, exhausted and silent and holding his hand.

He closed his eyes on the warmth of all three of them, holding him fast in this world, together.

**Author's Note:**

> First FFXV fic, and the person to blame is my dear lovely Johanirae.
> 
> I am also on Tumblr [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com)


End file.
